


we’re on your shore again

by taizi



Series: saltwater hearts [1]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 18:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16979841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: And the pair of children Yoshi had found on the beach were like little wraiths, small and silent and hardly there at all if not for the sharp scent of sea-salt that clung to their soft skin and hair and the very air around them; a smell that two warm, bubbly baths hadn’t been enough to dispel.





	we’re on your shore again

**Author's Note:**

> an au i cultivated with my dear pal @wardenofthenorth on tumblr <3

He parked on the shoulder of the road, and, with a lingering glance in the rearview mirror at his two sons in the back, sleeping soundly in their carseats, Yoshi left the car running and the heat on as he opened the driver’s side door and stepped out.

It was chilly on the beach, but the night was clear without any of the gloomy ocean fog Yoshi had become accustomed to, and the moon was bright – so that even from his car, driving slowly on a narrow stretch of road, he could easily make out two tiny shapes huddled in the foamy surf. And the sight of them now propelled him even faster across the packed sand.

Two little boys, not possibly any older than three years old, with brown skin and dark hair and round eyes, gazed up at him as he approached, clinging to the bloated body of a large, dead seal. The first thing Yoshi did was kneel to pick them up, carefully, and lift them away from the lifeless creature.

They trembled in his arms, young and desperately afraid, and their hands had to be firmly uncurled and pulled from the seal’s rubbery hide. The smaller of the two made a hiccuping noise, a soft sob that drove straight through Yoshi’s chest like a knife. They wore no clothes, and there were no footsteps near them in the sand, and Yoshi had no idea how long they might have been left there in the dark, naked and alone.

“Shh, little ones,” he soothed, content to hold them until at least some measure of their distress was subdued. The lip of a strong wave lapped up and soaked the legs of his pants, but he hardly felt it. “Don’t be afraid, I’m here.”

His eyes fell again to the seal, and he stared at it in something like morbid fascination. It had clearly been mauled to death by some second creature with wicked teeth, and it’s body had probably swept up to the beach on the tide. These lost children had likely gravitated towards it for the simple want of companionship on an otherwise lonely stretch of sand and stone and sea.

“Who could have done this?” he wondered aloud, and brushed a careful hand over their heads, fingers combing through wet hair, matted and grainy with sand. “Surely you weren’t  _left_ here, not in such a way as this. Did you wander from home, perhaps, little ones?”

They didn’t understand, far too young to make sense of his words, but they seemed reassured by his kind tone and gentle touch, and so he kept up both. Soon their shaking stopped, and their fingers gripped tightly to his shirt in much the way they had gripped to the seal before, and Yoshi took that as his cue to stand and make his way with them back to the car.

There was a thick blanket in the trunk, with the emergency roadside kit and the tire jack; he settled the two found children carefully in the front passenger side seat, and hurried around to the back of the car to retrieve the blanket. By the time he returned, prize in hand, it was to find Leonardo awake and studying the two in the front seat with solemn almond-shaped eyes.

“Daddy?” he asked, in a voice soft and scratchy with sleep. “Who are they?”

“They are lost,” Yoshi replied, for lack of a better answer, and tucked the blanket around them. They clustered close together, and though the larger part of that earlier fear had left them, they were undoubtedly overwhelmed, and seemed cowed by these people and things they didn’t recognize. Yoshi smiled at them warmly, and pushed gentle fingers through their hair again, and felt something tight in his chest ease at the way they relaxed into his touch – giving trust away easily in the manner of children too young to know any better. “We are going to help them find their family.”

 

* * *

 

Which, as it turned out, was much easier said than done. After nearly four days and four dozen questions, the Turtle Cove Police Department – a department of six employees total, including two receptionists and a janitor – exhausted their resources only to announce that Yoshi’s two foundling children were a mystery. Their fingerprints weren’t in the system, they didn’t match any missing persons reports, and as far as the United States government was concerned, the pair of them didn’t exist.

“That makes them wards of the state, officially,” the chief said regretfully, and his eyes strayed to the boys at Yoshi’s side; wearing clothes borrowed from Raphael and Leonardo that hung tent-like off their small shoulders, holding hands like little sea otters. They had yet to say a word, and watched all the proceedings with wide, mud-colored eyes. “We’ve contacted Child Services. They’re sending a caseworker in from the mainland tomorrow morning, and after that –”

–  _they’re not my problem anymore,_ he didn’t say aloud, but Yoshi heard it quite well. And something in his chest turned sharply, a hot, tight bristle of indignation, at the idea that these children could be so easily discarded  _again,_ in so short a time and with such disregard. 

Without thinking, he said, “I don’t plan to wash my hands of them, Chief Bradford. If they have no home or family, than they will have one with me.”

It wasn’t until they were leaving the office, Yoshi having extracted an agreement from the chief that he would give the caseworker Yoshi’s phone number and home address when he or she arrived on the island, that the man considered he might be rushing into a commitment much bigger than he was rightly prepared for.  _Two_ boys were a handful even at the best of times, let alone  _four._

And the pair that he had found on the beach were like little wraiths, small and silent and hardly there at all if not for the sharp scent of sea-salt that clung to their soft skin and hair and the very air around them, a smell that two warm, bubbly baths hadn’t been enough to dispel.

They weren’t puppies that Yoshi could take in without a second thought, as long as he had room enough and money to feed them. They were  _people,_ and they would require the same level of love and attention as his own sons did, if not even more.

They stepped into the small waiting room, where Leonardo and Raphael were waiting with the kindly, aged receptionist. His sons hopped out of their chairs and crossed the room without missing a beat, reaching out for the younger two boys and looking up at Yoshi with eager, expectant eyes.

“So?” Raphael asked. “Are we going home now?”

“Yes,” Yoshi told him, reaching to take his hanging coat from the hook on the wall, but Leonardo stopped him with another question.

“All of us?”

Yoshi looked at him – at the affectionate, familiar way his arm was wrapped around the smaller of the two found boys – and felt his fledgling doubts scatter. It would be difficult, and it would be complicated, but it would surely be worthwhile. And if Yoshi could give the children a proper home, at the very least until their real family (if there was one) could be found, than he would be happy to.

“Yes,” he said again, warmed to the idea, “all of us.”

And when Leonardo and Raphael whooped and cheered, in a manner unbefitting of a police station, the other two responded in kind; smiling widely in response to the older boys’ apparent glee, even if they didn’t understand the cause of it.

And it was just a trick of the light, Yoshi would decide later, when he thought back on the moment in wonder; but for a fraction of a second, as those found children smiled up at him guilelessly, it was almost as if those two pairs of muddy eyes shifted color, into sky blue and coral red respectively, and the sea-salt smell was strong enough in the air that Yoshi could almost taste it on his tongue.

 


End file.
